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  •  Georgia Standards of Excellence 

         In Richmond County, the Georgia Standards of Excellence are taught Kindergarten through 12th grade. The K-5 Standards define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade. Fundamentally, students in grades K through 5 are focused on developing comprehension strategies that will enable them to manipulate grade-level texts of appropriate complexity, and communicate effectively both in writing and in speaking. Students will begin to anchor their inquiries and responses firmly to the text, whether literary or informational, using increasingly specific and relevant evidence to support their claims and inferences. Students’ analytical skills will extend to identifying main idea/theme, understanding character and plot development, and evaluating the impact of word choice. 

         Instruction in grades 6-8 addresses students’ increasing maturity and the growing sophistication of their abilities, culminating in the development by the end of grade 8 of students who are ready to succeed in high school. Students should be able to comprehend more challenging books and articles, basing all of their analyses, inferences, and claims on explicit and relevant evidence from the texts. Students will expand on their ability to identify central ideas by identifying how those themes are shaped and conveyed by particular details. Their analysis of basic literary elements will extend to identifying connections and complexities within narratives and how individual elements weave together to advance the plot and reveal character. The evaluation of the impact of language on tone and meaning will begin to include more sophisticated concepts such as analogy and allusion, subtleties in point of view such as dramatic irony, and a more sophisticated appreciation for connotative diction. These skills will be incorporated into the students’ own narrative and expository writing. Students will become increasingly adept at understanding an author’s biases, the use of complex rhetorical devices including logical fallacies, and tailoring his or her own prose for maximum influence. 

         High school students will employ strong, thorough, and explicit textual evidence in their literary analyses and technical research. They will understand the development of multiple ideas through details and structure and track the development of complex characters and advanced elements of plot such as frame narratives and parallel storylines. Student writing will reflect the ability to argue effectively, employing the structure, evidence, and rhetoric necessary in the composition of effective, persuasive texts. Students will be able to construct college-ready research papers of significant length in accordance with the guidelines of standard format styles such as APA and MLA. Students in high school will have built strong and varied vocabularies across multiple content areas, including technical subjects. They will skillfully employ rhetoric and figurative language, purposefully construct tone and mood, and identify lapses in reason or ambiguities in texts. Students will recognize nuances of meaning imparted by mode of presentation, whether it is live drama, spoken word, digital media, film, dance, or fine art. Confident familiarity with important foundational documents from American history and from the development of literature over time will accrue before the end of grade 12. Students will graduate with the fully developed ability to communicate in multiple modes of discourse demonstrating a strong command of the rules of Standard English.

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